The Results Are In: Find Out Who Won SwimSwam’s 2022 World Champs Fantasy Draft

2022 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

• June 18-25, 2022 (pool swimming)
• Budapest, Hungary
• Duna Arena
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Prior to the 2022 World Championships, SwimSwam’s Braden Keith, Retta Race, Ben Dornan, and Coleman Hodges conducted the SwimSwam 2022 World Championships Fantasy Draft. Each GM drafted a team of 8 swimmers, selecting one swimmer from each continent (Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania, and Europe) and 2 wild card swimmers. The draft resulted in the following set of teams:

The goal was to draft a team that would score the highest number of points according to the scoring system that we devised. The scoring system is as follows:

• Individual Gold Medal: 6 points
• Individual Silver Medal: 5 points
• Individual Bronze Medal: 4 points
• Made an Individual Final, Didn’t Medal: 1 point
• Relay Gold Medal, Swam in Finals: 4 points
• Relay Silver Medal, Swam in Finals: 3 points
• Relay Bronze Medal, Swam in Finals: 2 points
• Any relay medal, Only Swam in Prelims: 1 point
• Individual World Record Bonus: 3 points
• Relay World Record Bonus: 2 Points *
• DQ: -2 points **

* The original post did not include the relay world record bonus but 2 points will be awarded if a swimmer races on a world record-breaking relay.

** The DQ penalty only applies to swimmers who race an event and get disqualified. It does not apply to swimmers who scratch or who enter and don’t show up for (DNS) a race.

The Results Are In

After 8 days of racing, Braden finished with the most points as his team scored a total of 90 points overall. Coleman had a strong performance, surging over the last few days to nearly catch Braden, and wound up in second with 87 points. Retta pulled off third place with a score of 66 and I had the worst performance, finishing last with 58 points. You can find a full breakdown of how each individual draftee scored during the meet below, but first, let’s check out the highlights.

Highlights

Braden (90 Points)

Two of Braden’s picks alone brought in more than half of his team’s points: Mollie O’Callaghan and Torri Huske. Those two women were actually the highest-scoring swimmers at the meet if you include all of the non-drafted swimmers as well. O’Callaghan picked up 2 individual medals in the 100 free (gold) and 200 free (silver), made the podium in 4 relays, and got a bonus 2 points for her world record-breaking mixed 4×100 freestyle. O’Callaghan scored 27 points overall.

Torri Huske wasn’t far behind with a total of 24 points. She won individual medals in the 100 fly (gold) and 100 free (bronze), made the final in the 50 free and 50 fly, and won 4 different relay medals. Huske’s performance was huge for Braden and it’s notable that she was his final pick and the overall 31st pick of the draft (out of 32).

It’s scary to think how Braden would have scored if he had gotten a fully loaded Caeleb Dressel, who left the meet after only swimming 2 events. Dressel still collected 10 points by winning the 50 fly and men’s 4×100 free but he would have surely gotten many more if he hadn’t pulled out of the 50 free, 100 free, 100 fly, and several more relays.

Braden had three other swimmers reach individual podiums in Yang Junxuan (200 free gold), Lara van Niekerk (50 breast bronze), and Kylie Masse (50 back gold, 100 back silver), meaning that 6 of his 8 swimmers won individual medals.

Coleman (87 points)

Coleman placed second here and has a group of 4 swimmers to thank for the majority of his points. Michael Andrew, Hunter Armstrong, Sarah Sjostrom, and Katie Ledecky picked up between 15 and 22 points each and were all on more than 1 individual podium. Sjostrom and Ledecky won 2 and 3 events each, while Andrew earned a silver and 2 bronze medals. Armstrong got a silver in the 50 back as well as a bronze in the 100 back.

Those individual podium finishes were huge for Coleman’s team and that quartet raked in 72 of his 87 points. Nicholas Santos got Coleman 5 points from his 50 fly silver and Kyle Chalmers was helpful on the freestyle relays he swam, bringing in 9 points including his world record bonus.

Retta (66 points)

Just like Braden with Torri Huske, Retta’s final pick in this draft was her highest-scoring team member. Claire Curzan had 4 finals swims at the meet and landed on the podium in the 100 backstroke. She also earned points by placing 5th in the 100 fly and 50 fly, as well as 8th in the 100 free. Curzan’s big points, however, came from her relay efforts where she collected a total of 12 points from 4 relay medals.

Kaylee McKeown scored fewer points than expected but still managed to get Retta 18 points total. She won the 200 back, placed second in the 200 IM, and finished 5th in the 50 back. Additionally, she took silver in both the women’s and mixed 4×100 medleys.

Retta’s big get here was Josh Liendo who broke through at this meet to land on 3 podiums. Liendo managed to snag bronze in both the 100 freestyle and 100 butterfly at the meet and nearly got onto the podium in the 50 fly where he finished 5th. Liendo got another few points for Retta in the mixed 4×100 freestyle when Canada finished second overall.

Ben (58 points)

My team didn’t have as many high-scorers as the others as  Zhang Yufei led the charge with her triple bronze performance in the butterfly events. She got 12 events from those 3 podiums and then picked up 1 more in the 50 free final, placing 5th.

I had another 2 swimmers clear 10 points in Bobby Finke and Regan Smith. Finke got 11 points from his distance gold and silver, while Smith landed 6 points from her 100 back gold. Smith also had finals swims in the 50 back (5th) and 200 fly (4th), and her contribution to the women’s 4×100 medley.

That’s a quick summary of where the majority of our points came from so now let’s look at some of the swimmers who didn’t contribute as many points as we may have expected:

Misses

This section identifies places where our draftees performed slightly worse than what their ceiling was at this meet. This is not to disparage the swimmers, but just to identify where a certain selection didn’t quite pan out. All of these swimmers are incredible athletes and I am just a man watching on a computer.

Braden

• Braden’s lowest scorer was Fernando Scheffer who got 0 points overall. Scheffer got bronze in the 200 free in Tokyo but couldn’t replicate that performance this year, swimming a 1:46.11 for 9th in the semis and just missing the finals heat.
• Other than the obvious Caeleb Dressel departure, Braden’s only other significant disappointment was when Yang Junxuan scratched the 100 free semi-final after placing 8th in prelims. The 200 free champion made that move to focus on the 4×200 free relay, which China didn’t end up medalling in.

Coleman

• Coleman drafted double Olympic champ, Yui Ohashi, to his team as she had the potential to get 12 points if she could replicate her placements in Tokyo. But Ohashi didn’t quite pan out in Budapest when she missed the final in the 400 IM and then missed the podium in the 200 IM, finishing 5th, and netting 1 point at the meet.
• Youseff Ramadan was Coleman’s only non-scorer as he didn’t qualify for any individual finals at this meet.

Retta

• Retta’s draftee Arno Kamminga managed to get a silver medal in the 100 breast but then pulled out of the 50 breaststroke, which he surely would have had a shot at medalling in.
• Chad le Clos didn’t qualify for any finals at this meet, meaning that he didn’t get any points for Retta’s team.
• Joao Gomes Jr was the only swimmer in the draft to get negative points overall when he got disqualified in the 50 breaststroke semi-finals. He was seeded second out of prelims, which means that if that DQ hadn’t happened, he likely would have gotten Retta at least a few points rather than the -2 he scored.
• Shayna Jack had a strong start here by getting a 4×100 free gold and 4×100 medley silver but she then broke her hand during a warmup halfway through the meet. That took Jack out before she could contest her signature sprint events, meaning Retta lost out on some more potential points.

Ben

• My lowest scorer was Bruno Fratus who missed out on making the final on the 50 freestyle after competing in a dramatic semi-final with Maxime Grousset who went on the take bronze. Fratus would have been fighting for a medal if he had gotten into the final but his absence meant that we wouldn’t score any points for my team.
• Lani Pallister and Lukas Martens were both on my team and despite having both medalled in one event each, they missed the podium in their other. Marten made the final in the 200 free (7th) and the 1500 free (4th) but missed the final in the 800. Pallister got bronze in the 1500 free for 4 points but missed the podium in the 400 free and pulled out of the 800 free final due to illness.
• Penny Oleksiak was a solid addition to my team but had a slight setback when she got disqualified in the 200 freestyle. Oleksiak won 4 relay medals, which resulted in 10 points, but just missed the podium in the 100 freestyle.

The Un-Drafted

The last thing to look at here is obvious. We want to know which swimmers that went undrafted in our draft would have been the highest scorers if we had selected them. A few of the swimmers who we considered drafting but didn’t wound up exceeding all expectations and would have been huge points-scorers for any of our teams:

Highest-Scoring Undrafter Swimmers

• Summer McIntosh (CAN): 19 points
• Nic Fink (USA): 18 points
• Leon Marchand (FRA): 17 points
• Thomas Ceccon (ITA): 17 points
• Kristof Milak (HUN): 15 points
• Nicolo Martinenghi (ITA): 15 points
• Ryan Murphy (USA): 15 points
• Madi Wilson (AUS): 15 points
• Carson Foster (USA): 14 points
• Lilly King (USA): 13 points
• David Popovici (ROU): 12 points
• Benedetta Pilato (ITA): 11 points

Strongest Team Of Undrafted Swimmers

Check out the full breakdown of points here:

Braden’s Total: 90 Points

Coleman’s Total: 87 Points

Retta’s Total:66 Points

Ben’s Total: 58 Points